It is common to power electronic devices with battery packs containing two or more battery cells. For instance, two or more battery cells may be stacked in series to produce a higher voltage to power various electronic devices. The batteries are monitored to provide a user of the powered device with information regarding the amount of energy remaining in the battery. In some applications, each cell of a battery stack is monitored because the voltage for each cell may drift too high or too low for a particular application or a particular cell may stop working, affecting the overall performance of the battery stack.
Circuits that monitor the battery cells in the battery pack monitor the voltage across each cell and the voltage for the entire series. Typically, a mechanical tab electrically connects each battery cell to the monitoring circuit. The mechanical tab over time may become disconnected due to physical conditions such as dropping the battery pack. When the tab becomes disconnected from the battery cells, the circuit loses the ability to monitor individual cells.